ecbi has published a paper elaborating a “toolbox” of proposals to reform the UNFCCC process to make it more fit for purpose. While multilateralism remains vital to address the challenge of climate change, the UNFCCC Sessions are increasingly ill-suited to the new role urgently required of the global climate governance system: to accelerate implementation, foster cooperation, overcome practical barriers, and mobilise diverse national actors to deliver transformative climate action. The paper, Reforming the UNFCCC Sessions to Improve Negotiations and Support Implementation, authored by Stefan Ruchti-Crowley and Paul Watkinson with contributions from Benito Müller and Anju Sharma, identifies four challenges that constrain the process:
- consensus-based decision-making consumes much of the available time and political attention, often producing lowest-common-denominator outcomes with limited impact on implementation;
- increasingly crowded agendas leave little space to focus on implementation;
- the formal process does not adequately engage the national actors responsible for delivering climate action on the ground; and
- while the UNFCCC has developed a range of formats that can foster cooperation and exchange beyond formal negotiations, these are not being used to their full potential and opportunities remain to better connect the process with implementers.
The paper proposes a range of solutions in the form of a toolbox to improve the efficiency of the multilateral climate process, namely through:
- improving agendas, including by merging agenda items under thematic pillars, developing good practices for agenda adoption, and removing “ghost” agenda items;
- organising work better, such as through moving to a Multi-Year Programme of Work, reviewing mandated events and constituted bodies, and making better use of inter-sessionals and pre-sessionals;
- expanding the focus on implementation, including by ngotiating only what needs negotiation, expanding alternative modalities that drive implementation, and ensuring the Enhanced Transparency Framework is a mechanism for mutual learning; and
- putting in place structural changes, such as: appointing “Heads of Implementation”; making non-Party stakeholders active partners; strengthen science, policy, implementation links; organising finance and technology dialogues; and developing an Al-enabled learning-by-doing platform.
Read also the recent article in Climate Home News that describes the issues discussed in the paper.
